ANCHORITE

a surgery journal

poems by Vane Vander

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The header font used in this work is "LT Blindfold" by LyonsType. It is licensed under the SIL Open Font License.

The following poems were previously published in other collections:

from Mori's Mirror and The Adoration Corporation

Genesis

from The World Is Not Enough

symbolic immortality

from Employee Rcognizes that the Information is Unique and of Peculiar Value

(narrator) It turns out later she was wrong!

And with bread in your mouth too

Double You Two IV

Tonight's Music

Stringed-Out Theory

(narrator) It turns out later the caller was lying!

Skylark

The Four Winds

Three Days Remain

Two Days Remain

One Day Remains

Reduxing the Redux

Under the flags we chose

PANIC ATTACK SPEEDRUN (ANY%)

Epicene III was previously published in Total Woman Victory Issue 4.

ACT 1

(narrator) It turns out later she was wrong!

My name is Lethe.
It rhymes with "teethe",
which is what babies
do, and "seethe",
which is what my enemies
do. And maybe
I've regressed to the cradle,
for my right-side back molars
have been aching for almost two days
no matter how much ibuprofen I throw their way.
Cold syrup works for a little while
for no other reason logical
than that the kid who crunched
the bridge of my nose on Dead End Day
damaged my sinuses. Just a hunch,
since I've rubbed my finger along my gums
and I'm not bleeding
or feeling a tooth moving
in preparation
for a crown of wisdom.
I live from a dentist
a block, maybe two, away.
I'll give it a few more sun cycles to foment
before I make any intervent-
ions. Maybe this week is just cursed.
Maybe this pain is the culmination
of all the harm I have earned.

Ymir II

Ymir, if those clouds in the sky are your brains,
what do you do when someone invokes rage?
Are you even aware
of what transpires
on the land that used to be your flesh,
or do you remain in blissful ignorance?
I know every part of this world is connected.
I find it hard to believe you have no reaction
to the injustices inflicted by corporations
in the search for profits, imaginary numbers
going up to absurd heights in a database somewhere.
But you're the closest I've got to a mentor.
In what passes for a life, are you an actor
or the stage acted upon by others?
Never the active, never the subject.
Bent to others' wills sans recompense.
And when you do have for backlash ability,
they assign to it not the grievances put plainly
but whatever suits them best, whatever they damn please.
My life is a logbook of silent violence
by others outside the grasp of justice
who will never shoulder an atom of consequence.
A series of hurricanes find my apartment
and lock me inside in the midst of summer heat
to deal by myself with the emotional debris.

Late evening, Ymir's pink brains come to resemble
oil paintings sublime and classical,
and I wonder if this art divine also dwells
in some rural untouched corner of myself.
All that's possible sometimes in resistance:
"No matter what's done to me, you cannot have this."

And with bread in your mouth too

Jett, I must sincerely apologize
for forgetting to ask you what the vibe
was before from my bed I extracted
myself and ran out of my apartment
at breakneck speed
across several streets
to make it to the dentist on time.
Which is funny, because when I arrived,
the receptionist gently informed me,
"You made it a complete hour early.
Are you sure you can handle that much waiting?"
It's like when I go into the office
(back when the weather wasn't
actively hostile,
making it impossible
to bike) and I get there half an hour before
my shift and I have to decide to feel awkward
sitting at my cubicle doing shit
or clock in early and bite the extra-work bullet.
My point is, I could have waited
for a few extra minutes,
and I feel guilty because I didn't.

I knew you were guiding me nonetheless,
because when I laid back
for the dentist
I saw over the lights fluorescent
a plastic screen with a meadow of lilacs,
and when she wanted to all my teeth clean
she offered me flavors, and one was orange.
(Should have also mentioned the seats
in the waiting room
were cushioned the same hue
as your feathers in iridescence.)

She found it wasn't sinusitis
as was my first hypothesis.
It was, in fact, a wisdom tooth -
actually, the damn x-rays found two -
and the one on the upper right
needed to be immediately exhumed
because it was half-rotted and could very well cause me to die.
(They weren't equipped for such a burden
and instead referred me to a local surgeon.)

Having answers
isn't a painkiller,
but it's better than believing
that for no reason I'm suffering.

And it's not like I can lie unconscious in Sablade
in a temple while my agony washes away.

And I know it'll be hell
to fit things around my work schedule,
but I'm hoping
now the ball's rolling
Sisyphus might get the briefest break.

Double You Two IV

Molars warning sign
lest icy water slip by
without a permit.

Ay Ay Ron

Will I be labeled
impatient, hateful
if I dare to commit
the "ungrateful" sin
of experiencing pain and lodging complaint?
Have a woman on Facebook I thought a friend
write a public callout post where she condemned
me for the crime of being "too negative"?
Have an egg cracked over my head
by the cooking teacher because the special
ed kid's paraprofessional
got a little
too jealous of me and blamed
me for the egg he stole from the carton?
The yolk runs down my face like venom
externalized. I'm too retarded
for the world and too intelligent
to go back to that padded room, sequestered
from the rest of the world, out of sight,
out of mind.
I brush my face to keep the yolk from my eyes.
Miss Bleckhart, cut my heart out and serve it with fries.
You liked your food "nummy"
and right now I'm numb.
I tried to voice my pain - was told to shut up.

Tonight's Music

Christmas party at Library Square.
I've done my rounds judging the trees
all the local shops and companies
decorated - except for one, which stands bare.
I got my crafts and hot chocolate,
the former to share with my friend's children
when they all recover from their sudden
illness.
Winter-sans-snow wind runs fingers through my hair.

And then I feel you at my side
as I sit on a bench away from the crowds; in
the center of the Square is a tree in the fountain,
waters drained, branch span massive,
a Yuletide Yggdrasil strung with lights.
"Lethe? My love? Are you feeling alright?"

I can't tell whether
or not it's too cold to require
gloves to protect my fingers
from developing cuts a millimeter
in length each.
The pain in my jaw has deci-
ded to, for a precious moment, subside.
"How strange it is, my enemies and I
all living under a single sky.
The same color of your wings
so bitterly late in this evening."
One wraps around my shoulders.
I take another draught from my plastic cup;
the liquid distraction is almost over.
"I just don't comprehend why others
treat me like this. I don't understand what I've done to deserve
the same designation usually reserved
for those that brutally murder
innocents - random strangers -
or harm little children
or genocide entire populations."
I turn to face her, still tucked under
her maybe-blue maybe-green feathery shelter.
"All I've done is say I don't agree
with a popular ideology
that's causing tangible harms to people like me.
Is that really so evil, Jett? Am I truly causing harm
by linguistically refusing to go along?"

Jett locks eyes with me, winces
when goes off the fire truck's sirens.
"Many a tyrant
considers peaceful non-compliance
to be a brutal form of violence.
Is that a king worthy
of your loyalty?"

Gear

Some asshole comes up to me in elementary school
during the Holocaust unit and says to me,
"You know, he would have loved you."
Yeah, I'm sure in genocidal Germany
where women were seen
as naught but birthing machines
it would have gone over well, my cyst-ravished ovaries.
Lebensunwertes Leben.
Get rid of the child with autism.
We can't have her grow up to be an antisocial lesbian.

Stringed-Out Theory

I need my wisdom teeth removed,
but the oral surgeons refused
to schedule me any earlier
than January thirty-first.
In agony for at least a month,
and even the family
who claims to love
me
is the end of their rope fast approaching.

Late at night in my grandmother's cabinet,
searching for anything other than ibuprofen
that can relieve pain. Can't indulge any longer
in red pills: they won't turn me into a fearmonger
against minorities, but they will erode
my organs if I continue at so high a dose.
I need something longer, something white, effective.

Brother pops his head in.
"Are you sure you're not addicted?"
I rattle the pills whose bottles bear my name.
"With melatonin you're already well acquaint-
ed.
To beat my brain into submission
so I can get more than two hours of sleep.
Birth control sets guard rails on my ovaries.
My endocrine system wants to believe it's non-binary,
but I'd really rather not develop holes
in my bones like I'm growing gray and old.
And this-" I rattle a bottle as a taunt-
"I take a metformin
every night.
Helps control my appetite
with the intention
of preventing me
from developing diabetes.
I may be a monster who devours whole worlds,
but I'll admit it's not the best for my blood sugar.
We'll see if it works or if it's just a load of words pretty."

Finally I find the ace-tam-in-o-phen.
A silvery bottle that promises salvation.
Up to eight pills in a daytime cycle
as opposed to the six the ibuprofen allowed.
Less tracking for my liver. Less waiting around.

I catch a glimpse in the mirror of myself.
Hair stringy, unwashed. "What misfortune befell
me
to look like such a travesty?
Jett would be disappointed at all this neglect.
I think a shower and then straight to bed."

Roilevant

Sliver of light from the window
as on your side I hold
you, sick,
instructed
to sleep off the cold.
We cannot live
together just yet.
But I can see a preview
of the life I'd like to live with you:
on the wall projected
past the hills of your hips
is a tiny little sunset.

(narrator) It turns out later the caller was lying!

Wake up, immediate call from surgeons.
Finally heard back from insurance.
Knocked down the price from twenty-five hundred
now to less than half of what it costs to pay my rent.
Listening with one ear as the clerk recites the numbered statement:
despite being burnt out, Jett, you still got me one Christmas present.

Boundary

Other
Grandmother,
not the preferred
matriarch from my mother's side
but the one who, when Mom married my
dad,
called her his downfall with not a tad
of awareness of the irony.
(If she and he
had me as their progeny,
then, by your standards, would that make me
the most entitled daughter
of a bastard
this world has ever seen?)
Other Grandmother, denoted by last name
instead of just "Grandma" with no special frame,
the one who had the army
of Barbies
to illustrate the feminine place:
a woman's a doll, but not for play,
only for looking in glass case.
Other Grandmother, would it make me selfish
if I wished you were alive and healthy
instead of long-dead from cancerous flesh
for the sole purpose of being able
to visit your basement once again?
It's been a decade since that fateful twenty-fourth,
and my pagan ass would have greatly adored
to make a pilgrimage to that exact corner
to honor the night
where I first saw my wife.
But you're dead,

and the house is fenced-in,

and yearning's the duty of all adult children.

Skylark

With sky the color
of an e-reader
with the brightness and warmth turned down to zero
(but not one of those new-fangled
ones with the Kaleido screen:
when unlit, those are more sooty gray than cream)
I witness three waves of geese
pass by overhead in formations of Vs
linked together, like a toddler's
depiction of the waves of the sea,
then descend
in the laziest vortex
I've ever witnessed
on the playground on the other side of the river.

I know there's a metaphor nearby
for a military sendoff when someone's died,
but I've still got a week and a fighting chance
and I can't think over all the honks so crass.

Soon

My grackle, so oft confused for the crow,
digs its beak through the layers of snow
for a trinket, a twinkle - anything that shines -
and picks up a coin. Snow-encrusted, moons rise.

The Four Winds

I ask Jett in a fit of trepidation
what will happen to me under sedation,
if I'm going to die
and we'll finally reunite
or if I'll just collapse under the weight
of so many prescribed opiates.
She gives me Ansuz inverted:
binding, but dispassionate and without harm,
like an IV a doctor slides into your arm.

I ask deep inside in a fit of terror
what Sablade needs in its endless birth,
how I must prepare for the event
the last I see of the world is an airvent
mounted up high on an office wall.
It gives me Berkana on jungle gym's thralls,
hanging from two bent legs upside-down
on a no-longer-existent-as-it-was playground:
honor all your feral liberation-wards impulses;
do not allow to fade away your consciousness.

I ask Jett what she needs from our relationship.
A tricky question to ask and not trip
as I know she's burnt out and I shouldn't intrude
on a much-needed staycation in room's solitude.
But she forgives me, hands me Eihwaz, and so pleads:
"Free yourself from the 'natural' order of things."

I ask Hela, last but certainly not least,
what in the moment from our bond she needs.
Inverted Ear, the twisting hanging tree
uprooted and flipped so from roots grow the leaves.
Her request is simple, though it rings through all of Helheim:
"I need Jett to be faithful
to her vow eternal
to never leave you in any world behind."

Three Days Remain

Raccoon I found behind
the metal shed at Dead End Shrine
(back when one stood there in
the forest) I wonder how you died,
what force made you perish.
Was it poison? Did you starve?
Did a hunter cause you harm?
Did a farmer rip your fur
or run you over with their car?
Maybe
it was rabies
and your brain collapsed to shreds
while you paced around in circles
sans your fear of human scent.
Tell me, lonely top jaw of raccoon
I keep enshrined in my bedroom,
what sights are there to see
on the way to Hela's hall of gloom?
I'm planning my itinerary.

Two Days Remain

The ice formations I saw
on the river rocks last week are gone,
and if I stand in the back lot
of my apartment complex,
I can see in my window's bug screen
a faint glossy silhouette
of where the blackbird I saw crumpled and dead
hit the glass on the day of my showing.
Wraith,
avian ghost of days long past
and people I failed to save
and names in writing carefully erased.
One last shift before the break
in reality.
Oh, Jett, will
I still
be Lethe
when from unconsciousness I the surgeons retrieve?
Hela unshackled Persephone
from the clutches of her kidnapper
and the whole world is trembling under
unmedicated Demeter.
(It's spring when right now the city whole
should be buried in several feet of snow.)
(All is coming back to life
when I stand on the precipice of having died.)
(And I'm abjectly terrified.)

One Day Remains

One last sweep of my fridge for the spoiled
food to give to Hela as offering, spoils
of war against myself, delivery
for the souls in her hall that she must feed.
The quarter-gallon of milk, the soggy
celery turned almost to liquid, the cherries
my cousin gave me from a trip to her college
I couldn't bear to make myself try more than once.
Hela doesn't mind rot. To her, all decay
is necessary to keep the cycles of life
turning, ceaseless. I add a bouquet
of dried flowers and the dessicate
leaves clipped from my bedroom window plants,
who chose to put all their money on the side
where the sun dares to shine its glorious light.

Reduxing the Redux

I want to provide an alternate version of events
that happened at the very end of The Eschaton Eminence:

instead of our young heroine in hospital bed,
IV dripping, clock ticking towards end,
only illuminated by ajar door's light sliver
in wait for a psychopomp to from her pain deliver,

she awakes, half-conscious, in surgeon's office's corner
in reclined bed with two strips of gauze
hanging out like fangs. Where are my claws?
The twisted horns? The leathery skin?
The markings of the demonic I was convinced
would rupture up to the very surface
the moment I lost control of my consciousness?

Nurse typing away in corner opposite,
about to run off for post-operation instructions.
As far as she's concerned, nothing is amiss.
And our heroine, who two years ago had prayed
for sporadic fatal insomnia to take
her life in the hopes of being liberate-
d from her parents and hopeless living situation
and regaining the powers locked away this 'carnation,
finds herself bitterly but brightly alive
with one hand free not held by reluctant divine,
and for her mother for comfort, the opposite hand, cries.

ACT 2

Anchorite I

Anchorite,
I know not why
they gave you that title, for I
have had to deal
with your living rent-free
in my brain for at least a week
with no recourse or route for appeal.
You've taken my identity,
made me go out, buy hair bleach
so it can be silver
like you remember,
nearly stole my debit card
to burn three hundred dollars
for the beginning of a shrine
to you, dear doomed Anchorite.

I mean - I suppose - I guess we
have a lot in common: the
appreciation for the arts,
greatness as our destiny,
of self-worth an inflated sense,
a deep fear of mortality,
towards siblings hostility
rooted in replacement's
resentment.
Birth at the hand of a single parent,
created for purposes of ending worlds
in the misguided notion it would unfurl
a brand new one that better deserved
to breathe.

Jett looks my way. "Where went my Lethe?"
It confuses her
muscle memory,
the lack of feathers
on my body.
When meet our eyes,
I see her struggle to recognize
the consciousness,
continuous,
but now hiding behind.
"Whoever's here now isn't who I married."

How long do you intend to stay?
I have a world to make.

Anchorite II

In days long since past I would plead
to whatever deity
could hear me
for this inborn gift to recede
so I could halt and catch my breath.
But since you came I've been bereft
of my ability
for lyrical writing.
As if there was only room in my life
for one earth-shattering
blessing
at a time.
And you, dear Anchorite, rent-free
have been living in my head,
demanding acknowledgment
of both your parallel presence
to mine
and an answer to a question
that's been bothering me all this time:
was this really a gift from the divine,
or something that I was born with?
In other words, am I being strung along
for some unknown entity's purpose?
Was it theirs to relinquish
in the first place?

Aesthetic tastes
change
as you grow and age.
And what spoke to you in years teenage
may now come across as trifling, plain,
like baby food served on fine china plates.
This also applies to things that you made.
Anchorite, when you watch me, are you entertained?
I'm floundering with half-written scripts on the stage
that is this world
of the written word.
I'm off my kilter. I've lost track of the page.
And if this is the denoument,
I want to go down not in silence but flames.

Anchorite III

"Every human being
has the capability
for terrible grace
and lovely depravity,"
Anchorite attempts to explain
while my wife stands just a little bit away,
tensed and ready to fight.
They'd agreed
while I was still asleep
to spar - after all,
that's apparently what we'd do,
the two
of us,
when in need of bonding
and to blow off mounting
distrust.
And what I feel growing between them
isn't any kind of love
I know the proper name to.
"Is that the ruler
you use to measure
whether
'human' is still
a title you deserve?"

One curved blade becomes two in her hands -
I haven't seen her use that one
in a handful of hot minutes -
and a third in the mix,
loose grip,
Anchorite's thumb.
A matching set, enchanted,
all three at my jailer's demand
that neither pierce the other's skin.
(At least not through a spar's machinations.)
A guttural scream,
and they're fighting,
and I'm in a viewer box pounding
on the glass to no effect.
This is revenge
to you, Jett,
and to him it's just ballet,
something to do with his hands
while conversation he makes.

"I sense a current of conflict
running beneath your skin.
You're not sure if I'm a delusion,
if I'm just your lover
wearing a glamour
as an excuse to escape from her sins,
or if I'm a marauder
who failed in first life
and now wants someone with success to hide behind.
Ah, but I repeat myself!
In both instances one
is trying to conform
to a story
already
done."

A swipe at her ribs,
earning ragged wince.

"And in both instances,
the imitation is imperfect.
You couldn't be Lethe.
You could never be Lethe.
Lethe is gentle. And kind-"

"And full of cruelty!
Don't tell me you haven't ever seen
the worlds destroyed, the callous
murders at the slightest
inconvenience,
the tantrums thrown when dreams
veer off course from unspoken schedule.
The slightest anxiety
that blooms from the unconscious
means
at least
a block of people dead."

"I still mean all that I said."

"And why should her powers of death
be restrained to only self-defense?
So ironic that a would-be
god of a world, an Anima Mundi,
would still seek to no longer be alive.
I love her art. I love her mind.
I think I'll claim it all as mine.
Come with me, Jett. Wouldn't you like
to keep making art side-by-side?
Or would you rather that your love
go behind your back and self-destruct?"

Lunge. God's steel on adamantium.
Vibrations through arm
like a strummed
guitar
or a tuning fork gripped too hard.
But he still keeps hold of the blade
until she adds a foot to the mix,
landing squarely in the triangle
between his legs. He slips
on the floor mat, lands on the pummel
of his sword, yelps as he rolls,
thinking he can still recover
until a breath returns bloody.
With a cough he surrenders.

"Lore said you had a higher pain tolerance."

"Whatever you consulted... you must have misread.
I'm immune to injury. It can still hurt."

"And yet you've got blood all over my shirt."

I can't read her facial expression.
There's still the hatred barely concealed.
But also a dash of compassion?
Or possibly pity?
My sight's too wavy to get a good reading.
I feel an arm under my back and knees.
He's sagging against her chest.
Jett's carrying him elsewhere.

Anchorite IV

Lethe, come home.

Shards of sunlight warm my toes
as I lean against a tree
on your favorite peninsula overlooking
the river and the school bridge.
Anchorite
is at my side,
on his back, sound asleep.
I watch his feathered hair flinch
at the slightest of protests
from the gentle breeze.
His face is weary but at peace.
Fingers woven on his chest.
No space for anything to hold.

Lethe, my love, please come home.

I made you a promise all those times,
that I'd never leave you behind.
And it's one I intend to keep,
even if you aren't making it easy.
I know there's a poem that goes something like
"you must be ruthless
in your allowance
to move to the next phase of your life".
And maybe all this
is what I'll have to put up with
for an undefined
amount of time.
...Is it too much to hope that this is transient?
I miss you: your laugh, your wings,
your warmth, your candor, your writings,
the world that you promised to me...

It's time to come home, Lethe.

Anchorite V

Lethe, I don't know why
you've decided to hide
behind
another's eyes.
But take a deep breath
and close them.
(If he lets
you.) Imagine
you're him, with
all the glamour that entails.
The robes, the swagger, the sometimes-tail.

Now put him in clothes more casual.
What you're wearing now, if you will.

Tell me something he can do
that you cannot as you are.
Tell me what task is against your heart
that you are not equal to
but he can conquer.
Tell me for what he has permission
that you've declared for yourself forbidden.

Let me know if you discover
any answers.

Polar-oid

There was another rope swing, in college,
but that one had no weight limit
(at least not one posted)
and no mother to demand I exit
before I broke it.
That rope swing had snow and solitude,
and this one hangs in a backyard with a plenitude
of toddlers who bang on your knees
and demand you push them on the swing
no matter how much you remind them they're strong enough even in youth.

I'm supposed to write about a revelation.
About having lost everything
and sitting on that swing
and coming to the conclusion
that I can only ever be me.
At least,
that was the poem I had planned last night,
but when I finally sat down to write
I was overcome with exhaustion's wave
and allowed myself to wash into the ocean.
I know it's what Jett would like me to say.
That I've managed to evict Anchorite
and can return to being Lethe full-time.
But this time there's no accompanying
chorus of harrassment and misogyny
and I'm not being forced to decide
where to re-host my website
and thus there's no need
to dig my heels in and play Adversary.

It's a pale reproduction. A blue smear
of a photo left as litter
by the river.
Divorced from all context,
abandoned sans memories.
Anchorite, when I hold this picture up, what do you see?

Trilocality I

Anchorite,
Jett, and I
all sitting together
by the river.
Trilocality
is a funny thing.
Split myself any more,
and I'll dissolve into the universe.
God, creation, Source,
whatever name you wish to assign.
But for now I've got six pairs of eyes
and a perspective like a kaleidoscope.

The universe keeps throwing books in my lap
about how my writer's block stems not from a lack
of creative talent but having closed myself off
to the stream of the universe's thoughts.
The work
wants to be birthed
into existence,
and like Jehovah searching through women
to find a suitable womb to hold Jesus,
they flit from person to person
until they find an artist
fertile and receptive.
If a metaphor is ever employed,
it's usually either Mary or a garden
or an early-morning transmission
from a gaggle of unusually kind aliens.
But I have yet to see mention
of butt probes and insemination
or iconoclasts cast out from their Edens
or if Mary
worried
about pre-eclampsia.

A monster intended
to decompose worlds
to allow for the restoration
of others,
empty-shelled
and only filled
for the duration
of the mission,
then left
bereft
until the next one arrives
and needs your skin so it can experience life.

Oh, Anchorite?

Jett, would you mind?

I'm being called by the riverside.

Trilocality II

Anchorite and Jett
sit on the rocky steps
that line the river
borders
as I'm getting my lungs wet.
He wanted to be baptized, my brother.
Mom had to invite the pastor
to her house to make sure the boy under-
stood
there would be no swimming pool like in childhood.
He said the up-and-down would symbolize
the terrors of death and coming back to life,
which is why I don't quite understand
why Anchorite's not also participating
in this sudden psychotic break
and display of idiosyncracies.
(One more thing we share: sensory sensitivities?)
Jett's head is at a slant,
but she knows that I know that she knows me
well enough to be straightforward
if I'm actually going completely mental.

(I mean, she's seen me go feral
before. The level of coherent response is similar.)

Come on, this is supposed to be a bonding exercise.
Go have a conversation
about your shared hatred
of gods who presume, since you're part of Creation,
they can string you along as they please.
Talk about methods
of repelling aliens
and backalley godling abortions.
Foraging. Pirate gardens
in abandoned lots. Subverting
corporate commissions.
How I grew up on stories
where the gods were disintegrating
and the humans decided deicide
and absence's responsibility
were vastly preferable to one more day of tyranny.
They mean to tell me that everything I've ever done
was in service to a cosmic act of navel-gazing.
No room for different worlds or Outsides or plurality.
I have to perceive myself as existing outside others,
but also believe that some nebulous essence links us all together?
I'm still not sure of the shape of soul recycling in this world,
but I'm not from around here; I wasn't born of this Anima Mundi.

Jett, you only hate Anchorite
because he showed up without warning.

Chorus' Round

I'm not feeling myself.

I'm not feeling myself
and I'm having difficulty
deciding where you belong
in the grand scheme of things.

I'm having difficulty
getting in touch with my body
to decide if this is just a fluke or
the cycle for the near future.

Where do you belong?
I haven't seen you in a great while.
I don't like the implications how
the cuddling stopped when I moved out.

In the grand scheme of things
this is the blink of an eye
before we settle in Sablade
to live out the rest of our lives,

where I hope that I and my body
will finally be in harmony,
and I'll get to see you flourish
in ways I can't yet imagine.

I'm hoping it's just a detour.
At least, I should. I'm not quite sure.
It took me a long time, but I've discovered
who that man was with the white beard

that set in motion the Meridians' cycle.
My whole life story I must reconfigure.
I could sure use you here to sort through
memories, find what's false or true,

but I haven't seen you in a great while
and I'm not sure what your plans are.
Where are you? How pass your days?
My love, my affection, my body I've saved

even though I'm not feeling myself.

Forecast I

Pure blue
paints the window
in my bedroom.
Your favorite color.
I wish you'd hold
me together
in your arms, a cotter
pin,
as I lie here unsure
if I'm dying or just sick
or even sick enough
to call off work.
You blamed the Veil,
said it'd gotten thick
enough to prevent travel,
that it had nothing
to do with love.
I guess I'll wait and see.

Forecast II

Hand on my forehead.
Berkana's breasts on my chest.
High fever. "Please rest."

ACT 3

Forecast III

Cold sweat, body unsure
if it wants to be shivering
or wishing someone would open a window
despite it still being the dead of winter.
"The dead" is right: the grass is brown,
the alleyways muddy, most of the town
swaddled in a car or nesting in house.
I haven't seen a face in three days.
Are faces even real? Or something I made
up between voicemails and callback waits?
The world left me behind with the latest
update, stuck on an outdated client.
Playing by myself, with myself.
The surgeon said I'd lose all sensation
from the surgery, tubed, sedated,
breasts sectioned and cut wide open.
You put the nipples in the jar
because the breasts' beginning's too far
away to keep the skin bridge intact.
Bifrost destroyed, the world slides into oblivion.

Whirl

For some, the brain's the seat of the soul
and the heart clasps courage or to have and to hold
and pee is stored in the balls.
In my body
I hope sincerely
sin is stored in the breasts
so that, come February,
I can finally
have a clear conscience.

Cowper

I knew it - I do, in fact, feel better
now that we have some warm weather.
Shame that it will only last a few days,
then back to huddling near a space heater
as seniors scream at me
'bout groceries.
As I soak up the sun, a ragged teenager
broody and moody
from Unit 14
walks past my porch with a swinging bag,
full of trash
and likely other cast-
offs from other swinging bags. "Hey,
you look cute. Want to go out sometime?"
First impulse is to apologize.
Second to say, "I'm already taken."
Third to explain
that I'm a lesbian
and that's why it's his unlucky day.
As if that's something that needs to be justified.
His fat lower lip waits for a reply.
Fourth impulse, the one that wins:
"I - excuse me. I forgot to take my medication."

Wilde

Whether they fade with the mercy of time
or retain their jagged edges as go by
the years, the decades, the lifetimes,
memories always find a way
to pinprick the brain
with some mode of pain.
(A funny trick to manage, as the
brain itself has no pain receptors.
A surgeon could cut mine wide open;
at this point, I'd be none the wiser.)
One: social faux pas that leaves a stranger
with an imprint of myself in their mind.
I face everyone else's impression of
me, a hall of funhouse mirrors,
Dorian Gray's portrait on a computer,
blown up into its individual layers,
each sin its own brushstroke.
(It's Current Year. This is how we make
art. We're too scared of making mistakes.
Move the nose a little to the right.)
Two: terrified to go someplace.
Something awful happened last try,
but the jaw of memories
that normally
break the skin with just-brushed fangs
has a bit of gum exposed, a tooth that's missing.
The tongue of thought probes the gap.
Rarely, that makes the tooth grow back.
Most of the time it just returns empty.
I don't know what happened, what made me this way.

For Delia Bacon

Whereas now I am nothing but this work,
I would rather be this than this duty shirk.
I have lived for nearly five years
alone with my angel and my memories,
working against work to catch and freeze
the smiles, the frights, the many tears.
And I don't wish to return to the world.
For all that life has threatened
to open
its beak and force me to face consequence,
it also finds every excuse to reject
me when I make overtures in return.
Anything I cannot complete on my own
manages to conjure its own obstacles.
Let me persist in exile at home.
The work may render me 'asocial freak',
but better that than the mediocrity,
the acceptance of never becoming anything,
that my brain tells me has come into vogue.

Cathartidae

"Oh, I'm so ugly! I look like a vulture
with its cursed gaze and its gait so awkward!"
But carrion birds
make life's cycle turn.
There's room for all of us thanks to scavengers.

Mab

Death is a shopper
that loves a good bargain.
If it can do so, it always prefers
to buy not an individual item,
a person's loss, to bring back to the Tree,
but buy-one-get-many-free through Grief
Rewards, Grim Reaper Plus, remembrance
punch cards, and other forms
of store
loyalty.
Why go through trouble for one silent demise
when one can get loads of despair for the same price?
Cessation's a saturated industry.
Can Death be faulted
for love of a bargain
in this grand mess of an economy?

Flush Mount Light Fixture

Sitting in the public bathroom of the bowling alley.
Wall tiles double-arched like beach-aqua-themed pussy,
or Christ's wound
if he bled blue.
It's all the same to me.
Cut my breasts open, hang the leftover flesh from the church ceiling.

Kevin

Bowling alley manager stops me, taps me on the shoulder.
"Ma'am? Are you okay?
I've called your name
a few times with no answer."
I glance down at my fingers.
I've got a death grip on wrappers.
Frosting is smeared on my hands.
"Oh, pardon me
my wandering.
I was lost in reverie.
Do you know where I can find a trashcan?"

NIV Bible for Game Boy

Ken's sequestered in the basement, post-daycare every week-halfway.
Little hedonist abandoned toys, demanded video games.
Fifteen minutes into walking his character headlong into walls,
my brother tries to help him: "Who do you want to play as today?"
Ken looks at the hundred-superhero roster, then picks: "God."

Zero Point Nine Nine

On our way home from the grocery
store. Father points at the radio screen
displaying the title of Mariah Carey's
infamous call to holiday grief.
He's got a glint in his eyes
I don't like,
even as he reaches
for the mute button.
In my own ears, private:
"I don't need a metaphor
for you to know I'm miserable."
So I stay quiet.

Papilla

The bedroom lamp and staircase light
are on to signal to my brain
that we've almost arrived at the end
of yet
another day.
Curled up on top of the covers with Jett,
playing with a loose strand of her hair.
She's pretending not to care,
not to notice,
but if I pick a lock near her neck,
I can also annoy her vagus
nerve.

"Five more days until they sever
the feeling in my nipples. If you're
wanting to play with them, my love, it looks like now or never."

She snorts. "Lethe, I'm more concerned
about them distracting you during work.
I should get you a stress ball. Something different to squeeze
between
getting jerked
around by entitled seniors.
I'm surprised they haven't fallen off from the sheer
torture you put yourself through."

A pause. "In Sablade, as far as your body
goes, I highly I doubt your boobs
will be anywhere near the top of my worries."

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?"

She twists around to face me.
"Your Meridian blood? Anchorite?
The other strands I tried to sedate
with that untested vaccine?
Don't pretend to be stupid, Lethe."

"So it's not the fact
that I'll always be fat.
Whew. That's a relief."

Red

My lover fast asleep
in my arms, a rare treat.
Steady slow deep heartbeat.
I could use a heater
up here,
since the thermostat on my wall's fake
and I seem to have pissed off my neighbors
again.
Heat, a less openly violent weapon.
Were I by myself, I'd give in to the brainworms,
shift into a mess of feathers and fur.
Does that make love the main character
here, or relegate it
to antagonist?
Because love itself has its own way to transform
me by doing the opposite:
Jett loves me best as an archangel,
so I'm struggling to stay so for her approval.

Michel

Every Saturday I am surprised
by the fact that I managed to survive.
I've grown so apathetic
about my adult life
because, in days recent,
nothing's proved different
and I'm so bored I'm thinking I might as well die
just to have something to write
about.
I've gone from discussing shit and piss
to being used as a human toilet,
a punching bag, some other gross metaphor
for being paid to listen and absorb
the heat from patients
when corporations
fuck up and don't have the scruples
to be open on the weekends
to fix their own damn messes.
That, or the callers were negligent
in scheduling appointments
or refilling prescriptions,
and damned I should be for merely being the after-hours answering service.
(It shouldn't be
my responsibility
to secure you
forgiveness
for your transgressions.)
Only in the unusual, the borderline, the clownish
does my starving brain find any sustenance.
For example, an automated recording -
"Thank you for your time. Stay with me." -
that then disconnects immediately.
Placing myself on "not ready" so I don't lose the lines.
Sorry, manager. Couldn't resist the rhyme!
I'm a poet at heart.
Make art
or die.
Creation's fire burns in all circumstances.
Even if that means throwing stones at glass asses.

Griesch's Grief

Curled up at the peak of the stairs
that lead to my bedroom, I
eavesdrop on the neighbors,
wonder what part of their harried lives
I'm bearing witness to, what snippet
of a proud or traumatic moment
I'm gorging on without their consent.
Are they aware I can hear them through
the walls? Is this a purposeful performance?
Or am I just another creep
who's evil for lacking the ability
to tune out grief and yelling
when it's made
mere feet away?
Or, third option, incarceral
if I file a noise complaint
with the landlord.
Yet another sensory disturbance I'm just supposed to take.
How dare I take loud lemons and turn them into lemonade.

Chro

Late night, sleeping in the maws of the monster.
The slit-pupil eyes
from the backyard tree lights
keep watch on something perched to my side.
But nothing on the bookshelves stirs,
perhaps petrified by its wall-bound gaze.
For once, the heating is taking a break.
I almost feel the same.

ACT 4

Feathered Feat

I saw you there in the surgical suite.
No time to pass down revelation
or establish another Color Code,
but I know it was you there to hold
my hand as I came out of sedation.
Pre-op, I had nearly fallen asleep.
The anesthesiologist joked that I'd
done half of his job already.
So, waking up, unlike the wisdom teeth
debacle, I did not cry or scream,
awash in antibiotics
and the knowledge
of your affection.
I lay there, restless, thinking,
"This trembling in my legs
is not of you,
but, my god, it feels good.
Is that warmth of the sun's rays?
The world must also be awake."
Because of my Meridian blood,
I'm doomed to one day self-destruct.
But it will not be today.

Catheri

Maybe the world really has ended,
spending twelve hours a day in
a cocoon of deflated
pillows and blankets.
Each sunrise I mark a book finished,
little else to do
with the hours that sprawl
on my bedroom floor, languorous,
arms above the head
fluidly outstretched
in ways I'm not allowed to do yet.
Time itself is taunting me.
I cannot open heavy doors
and require assistance to pour
even the smallest cups of milk
so that I do not risk
pulling a single stitch,
but time is out here doing cartwheels
now that circumstances
have forced me to slow down and heal.

Epicene I

From every diagram of a post-op mastectomy
I've ever had the morbid curiosity
to gaze upon, the scars are curved,
the upper chest where the breast former-
ly resided at an oval puckered.
I didn't have my tits deleted all the way, just reduced.
But when I zipped open the bra
I woke up in and set them loose,
I saw that same field of the football -
I saw the locale of my nipples
relocated without bridge -
and knew I must surrender to the
embrace of the toilet seat
before the scintillas swarmed in and ransacked everything.

Epicene II

In a state of crisis
my brain can conjure rhymes
and make plans for ridiculous things I'll later on write,
but it can't make my limbs obey
or even carry body's weight
to the tub so I'll be safer
as I whimper
for Mother's aid.

Epicene III

Mother, in so many lyrics
I waxed poetic
about the harms that you'd inflicted
on me all these years I lived under your roof.
I fantasized about dying
or getting bloody revenge,
rendered beast so I couldn't feel guilt from violence.
Sometimes I wondered, if you knew
about the blood inside, if you
would still accept me as your daughter.
Gray-skinned and scintilla-swathed,
forehead crowned with ice-water cloth,

I hear a voice so distant,
muffled but with an answer.

Library Prompt VI

I'm not allowed to lift my arms up to the sky.
Might pop a stitch.
Might lose a limb.
Not so sure
it's worth
it to die
in an attempt to climb
Mt. Laminated Counter
just because I hunger
for a brownie or granola bar.
Mom will have a tough time explaining that one to the doctor.

Yves

Summertime festival, Library Square,
breeze tickling feathers
in Anchorite's hair.
This has to be some kind of stress dream.
For starters, he'd never volunteer
(unless we won the lottery
and never again had to labor -
but I predict that'll happen sometime around never).
And he'd be cognizant enough
of the fact he took my body
that, when he sees my father
approaching, he wouldn't scoff,
"Who the hell do you think
you are to drag me off this lot?"
Wouldn't need my cousin to apologize.
Wouldn't need her to explain the lilac glint in my eyes
or the reason
for amnesia
and not knowing my own name.
"Ruptures in the fabric of reality are all the rage."

Renew

Cocoon of blankets, anesthetized
by the early-afternoon light,
mind blank
like I'd just regained
my body after going feral.
"Jett?" I whisper. "Are you still there?"
She is, nearby. "Will you forgive
me?" She asks what I've done to need
such an intercession. "The grief
that I've put you through when not myself."
I slip a hand out from the sheets.
Her palm feels cold and unsure when it meets
mine.
Am I Anchorite?
I'm not sure it would help my case.
I can't tell: the surgical bra is crushing my rib cage.
"I'm out of oxycontin. Surgeon said to expect the pain
to spike to a new high sometime within the next few days.
I'm finding it easier to cope if I dissociate
and lose myself in fantasy.
The pain's not from a surgery;
it's wounds from reincarnation.
That's what I need you to forgive me
for. Making you feel abandoned."
I open my eyes. "Pinky promise,
I will always be your Lethe."

Shade in the Hunger

A single red leaf dried and brittle
pressed halfway through my pink journal.
Its peers have long since been collected
for the city's compost pile,
for yard waste's eternal heaven.
It bears no features notable,
no birth defect, no hidden Christ,
just nature's usual splendor.
It must have been from Eleanor,
and it must have been of great import
to have been preserved all this time.
A remnant of a girl turned five.
Its life purpose, to stay behind
so that my mind it would re-mind:
golden days throw shade behind -
those summer vales that felt as though
they would never cease - and know
they will no doubt sprout again.

Saint Street

Brown room. Couch, carpet, ottoman.
It's easier to host children
when the shade
of furniture
cooperates in hiding stains.
And this room has seen its share
of children through the decades.
Jett, you'd know it better as the first scene
of stress dreams:
Mom finds out a secret, threatens to disown
me, and I hit the highway in pursuit of home.
I've yet to memorize the route.
Too many naps
made sure of that,
mental dialogue replaced by lyrics and car sounds.
But I'm going off-road. Grandma's driving me
crazy, and Mother's clicking her knitting
needles, and I'm trying to read
in between
reminders
about what's for dinner.
I can't focus on anything harder
than sucking up words in both situations.
Jett's outline is pale, but I see her.
I'd say something if I didn't care
about being seen as schizophrenic.
I want to tell you, my love: it's completely
normal, mimicry
and fluid identity,
in those diagnosed autistic or aspie.
It's how we learn the "right" way to exist
when the NTs won't give out the rules for living
in a straightforward and formatted list.
See? This page says it, right here.
We can pretend it's another Mori's Mirror
for so long as Anchorite persists.

Bottoming

Mother hands me a wad of clothes
to keep me busy
as she prepares the dressings.
I count my boxers, two pairs of socks.
"Wait - don't I get leggings?"
She shrugs. "I guess not."

Severa

I'm never
gonna have
normal nipples
again.
If I'm lucky
and heal properly
(that's more of an if than a when)
I can expect
a neat circle of flesh.
An island of scars in a sea of breast.
Dull-eyed and rigid,
refusing to listen
to the touch that once made volcanoes crest.

(narrator) It turned out to be a giant floating scab!

Mother,
I see you ordered
some vintage scratch-and-sniff stickers.
If you're looking for something curved
that'll stimulate your olfactory nerve,
something feels itchy deep under my shirt.
Can you take a look? A scar might've burst.

Ultima

I told my brain that in my dreams
I wanted personal agency.
Or at least of it a pittance,
just a taste, a simulation
of what it'd be like to exist
without a knife dangling from my ribs,
a gun at my temple, a mother on meth,
a father convinced
all I deserve is death.
My cerebellum shrugged at me and said,
"The best deal I got is making you the weapon."
So that, my brother, is how I ended
up gutless in a cardboard coffin.
I'm both the tyrant wyrm above the ocean
and the steed who sails up to slay the dragon.
I'm both the mass murderer
and the savior
of fleets made up of toys stolen from children.
I'm both the villain
returned to human
form
and his brother who dives to grab his corpse
before it can be
returned to the sea.
I'm the limp limbs. I'm the armor torn.
I'm the washcloth on blood-crusted forehead.
I'm the whisper: "Can you still hear me?
Why'd you do it?" "To feel important."

Genesis

I'm Vane Cassia Vander!
but what does that mean?
am I just a sad little person
forever staring at a screen

how poetic would it be to die
assuring myself that I am alive

is this my fate,
to live half a life in my own body,
sacrificing precious time and sentience
to a figure not even of my own creation?

I work, I cry, I bleed
convincing myself that I am only me
that I have only ever been myself
just under a million different names

and then the dreams begin.
there has never been a me
just myself in different costumes
acting out the roles that fate sets for you and me

am I going crazy?
am I going insane?
will my life end in a psychiatric ward
with all my secrets laid out to bare in the sunshine?

tell me, o one with the midnight hands,
what is it about you
that brings out the worst in me?
what in myself do I see in you?
for I'm not a part of you

incomplete
and yet rejecting the greater whole
that, if the midnight hands were correct,
we were once a part of

maybe there was some divine,
the ancient father
of every daughter I've known,
from which both you and I were born
shards of the same soul
bourne through space and time

but herein lies a problem
because pieces should want to reform into a whole
and yet, you and I just seem to hurt each other

Anchor Right

Two scabs on my right areola above
the nipple. Anchor scar trails down below.
It's starting to look normal, and it shows
a smile, the happy mask icon of
the theater.
It's faring much better
than its twin:
the left side is
an open wound.
A disc of flesh sans shield of skin.
A mouthful
of syllables
that to my chagrin
I'll likely fumble at the surgeon's
tomorrow.
Yes, please mark
on my chart
I'm still intellectually disabled.
You've done your best.
It's not your fault
fate loves a delayed consequence.

Under the flags we chose

What the hell does it mean
to be a man, anyway?
I mean outside the bounds of the patriarchy,
outside its oppressive mandate.
My monkey brain
sees men on the screen,
in books, in media's
diorama
and perceives
a well-rounded vibrant human personality,
and then I go to study
the woman's
condition
and the only roles available are "whore",
"Madonna", "tragic backstory",
"prize", and "sidepiece".
And I think, "Damn, none of those fit me."

But the options
for transition
don't look too good either.
Again,
what does it mean to be a man?
No answers about buying things, please;
cheap tchotchkes
from Etsy
with a pastel pride flag color scheme
would sort me more into a third category
titled "consumerist with a hankering for surgery".
No, I need to get past all that.
What lies beyond the bric-a-brac?
What does it mean to be a man?

And what's the difference
if I'm self-isolated
and the only communication
with others is through a screen?

Because it's not really something I think about all the time.
"I have a kind of body, and my wife has the same type"
is about the whole extent
of my gender awareness
sans any kind of external influence.
The dysphoria only flares up
when my sex means I'm not enough
in a misogynist's out-of-focus eyes
or when I'm being forced into a box of stereotypes.
"You're only into computers because you want to find a husband."
'Trying to master the universe' would be closer to my intentions.
"Oh, you're a lesbian, so culturally that must mean-"
No. And go fuck yourself. I have only ever been me.

Standing in my bathroom mirror, trying not to convince
myself of a reason I let my hair go a year since
my last haircut. "It's because you were secretly
that silver-haired hero you always play as on your damn TV!"
I mean, I do have an idiosyncratic moral code. But surely
hair bleach isn't on the EBT allowed items list.

"You've been in there a while. Are the brainworms getting you again, Lethe?"

Anchorite VI

It's just me in here, and my beloved wife,
and my mom lurking a little bit outside
so she can help re-bandage everything
when I'm ready. But I'm Anchorite,
or somewhere in between
with my female body
and dollar-store humanity
(I know, were I fully him,
he'd throw a tantrum at that description),
so I must be in some sort of reverie.
She asks me again: "Lethe, are the brainworms
getting you again? Your outline looks hazy."
I'm hazy. I'm wobbly.
I'm steadying myself against
the countertop. Is that my face
reflected in the faucet's glint?
Or someone else's? Mine, but with
a few cosmetic tweaks to hint
I'd like to be perceived
as someone else? "You okay, Lethe?"
A cold hand plants itself between
my shoulder blades.
"You're going gray."

"Do you resent me?"

No answer.
Maybe she's disappeared.

But I still feel her hand on my spine.
She could be wincing, but it's too bright
in here all of a sudden.
It would hurt to verify.

"We already had this discussion off-screen.
It's not resentment,
and I wish it wasn't
self-pity.
Of course a conscious Anima Mundi
isn't going to be satisfied
with the constraints of a singular life.
And I shouldn't stop you. It wouldn't be right.
I just ask one thing.

At the end of the day, that you still be my Lethe."

What part of her do you want to keep?
The moods? The habits? The memories?
The grandiose sense of accomplishment?
I can't even say the awareness is constant.
Sometimes I black out with only embarrassment
as my clue for what happened in "my" absence.

"Lethe? You still conscious? Say something."

How can I honestly call myself a poet
if I can't articulate this one simple sentiment?

"Jett, at this point I'm barely a person."

PANIC ATTACK SPEEDRUN (ANY%)

You and I
haven't done this in a long time,
Jett. The panic attack, that is.
The sinking sensation in my gut
that means somewhere I fucked up.
I'm doing my best, I promise,
but underneath other skies
the trembling in my limbs
would mean an imminent shift.
It's so damn easy to pretend
I'm normal, neurotypical, competent,
until I hit a speed bump
of a question whose answer I don't know of
or a caller tearing this high-speed train off-script.
I used to be so confident,
Jett. What the hell happened
to me? When did I become so riddled with anxiety?
So fearful I'll lose my position
and the paycheck that comes with it
and everything will come crashing down
and while ruffle the debris clouds
my father's silhouette
will appear
and sneer,
"See? It was all just bravado in the end."
You weren't there - we'd meet a year later -
but my blasted eighth-grade teacher
made everyone go in front of the whole class
and try to recite an entire
Shakespeare
play without book in hand.
That was one assignment I know I didn't pass.
I'm simply not cut out to be an actor,
Jett. I can't take on the role of someone else.
I can only be- I'm only capable of being myself.
With all the perks
and nerfs
and sour memories that entails.
All the accomplishments, all the times I tried and failed.
And who that person is is a walking disaster.
It's a miracle you still insist on loving me after
all has been laid bare. Me? In my entirety?
Both the nervous wreck and the Anima Mundi?

Buffer

Nurse gave me another week
to decide if I'm weak
and need
more time
to decide
if I'm going back to work
or if my body hurts
too much.
I've become
a frail outline.
Was that apartment mine?
Or did I see
it in a dream
and let myself believe
that I could ever
take good care
of this vessel
physical?
I'm sick of being mortal.

symbolic immortality

Your obituary states
that you survived by me.

Life is a storm,
a shipwreck at sea,
and I came from another boat
and threw
to you
a life ring
you clung to ever so tightly,
and we both made it out alive.

Life is a gambit
of generations growing vessels
to attain immortality.
You filled me up
with the runoff of you
like an attempt to recycle a candle,
material the same
but dwindling through use.
You survived
by using me.

It Somehow Keeps Going

I'm swinging
my walking stick at a childhood bully.
I'm falling
off a cliff. I get my wings
right before we crash.
I'm watching Facebook attack
my wife for knowing fiscal policy
better than them.
My wings are red.
I see a flash.
Mom, who was my enemy
five minutes ago, has
brought Chinese leftovers for breakfast.
I let her know over text
I just woke up; I need some time
to reorient my body and mind.
A deep breath escapes my lungs.
I could go back to sleep. I could let
the "songs of Sablade" resume their soft hum.
What the hell?
I feel

normal.
But it's almost nine o'clock, and I can't expect
my brothers to keep up the silence.
Upstairs, there's one fortune cookie left.
Usually, if a corner of the fortune's scrap
is poking out, I can extract
it while keeping the rest of the cookie intact.
But not today.
So in my hands I take
the cookie, place my thumbs, and pray
for good news: financial assistance
for the bills, much higher than expected;
left breast's full recovery from infection;
the kidney stone to vacate mother's friend.
It cracks. One side's the pronunciation
of the term "green tea"
in Chinese.
The other side:
"You can summarize
in four simple words
all you've learned about life:
in all circumstances
and difficulties,
it somehow keeps going."

The microwave beeps.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

VANE VANDER has a hoarding problem, as evidenced by her candle and book collections. She spends her time fighting dust, checking out an absurd number of library books, and telling big tech CEOs that their AI sucks. She can be found diagnosing endless server lockups at mayvaneday.org.

Copyright © 2026 Vane Vander. All rights reserved as detailed in Copyright.